If you looking to get most out of your business sales, applying effective SEO tactics is mandatory to drive customers to your website. However, the only thing consistent in SEO is change. Since there is a never-ending cycle of newer techniques, it is hard to keep adapting to that change. Keeping track of SEO trends can be tricky as they can completely alter from time to time. You might have applied the best practices and soon you would get to know that they are no longer functional and can bring your business harm rather than good. On the other hand, if you consider some trends not so effective, you may be left lagging far behind.
Last year, keyword density was finally oust from SEO realm. There were new measures in the semantic search, focusing on a safe, mobile-friendly web. Let’s look at the prevalent practices of SEO this year. Here is detail of all the shifts in older SEO trends, with new opportunities that are meant to dominate this year.
Link-Building Is Meant To Stay
You must have heard it before. Some SEO gurus are constantly claiming that link-building no longer has a future. And then the remaining experts brainstorm different ways which can help turn “building” into “earning.” If you want to stay in the front league of effective SEO, it’s better to be on the second team. There is a lot of research that supports the usefulness of backlinks, claiming it to one of the major ranking factors.
Google has put up some legit policies around manipulative and unnatural backlink profiles. Low-quality, spammy links are bound to be devalued by Google and you are bound to face a manual penalty if you opt for illegitimate linking methods.
How To Make Most of It?
To make most out of this situation, you should make it a routine to regularly clean-up backlink profile. Though quite uninteresting, it may be the means to keep you one step ahead, rather than one step back, in case you overlook the potential in it altogether.
A survey conducted by SEO PowerSuite shows that majority of SEO’s suffer from lack of ideas and opportunities but they can get most out of it by employing a mix of some old and new practices. The tips to keep in mind for this year would be:
- Avoiding spammy tactics such as grey-hat
- Expanding your link profile at a steady speed
- Designing thought-provoking content that can be linked to
- Developing links within a particular domain rather than stuffing in as many links as possible
- Considering legitimate paid methods
Going Mobile
In today’s digital age, mobile searches are embedded deep into our system and Google is a reflection of the consumers’ demands. Though Mobilegeddon has been pretty much the talk since the end of 2016, this year the trend is finally expected to take effect, where a site will be ranked on the basis of its mobile version.
The biggest factor that affects consumer’s shopping experience and has some part in the page’s performance on the SERP and conversions is the load time. To facilitate users with their mobile browsing, Google has introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which will speed up loading up to 4 times faster, improving the consumer experience by displaying easily navigable ads. Studies show that AMP is useful for improving CSR as well as bounce rates. Though AMP is not a current ranking factor, but there shouldn’t be any surprise, if it becomes one.
How To Make Most Of It?
With mobile-first indexing, Google advises to stay calm. Carefully analyse your site and if you see that it is not responsive and the content varies on your mobile and desktop, it is time to make some changes fast. Ensure that your mobile pages are not incoherent, void or less informative in comparison to your desktop version.
If you haven’t considered using AMP so far, it is the best time to start using it now. As per Google statistics, 900,000 domains have integrated AMP till now. However, the figure is significantly small, since there are 1.2 billion websites on the Internet. So basically utilizing the benefits of AMP in an unsaturated market can improve your rankings on Google, as compared to your competitors who might consider using it next year.
Voice Search Is Taking Over
The voice search tools are continuing to increase. Apps like Siri and Cortana are capable of sharing jokes with us and tell us about best places to have pizza. We can use Amazon Echo and Google Home to help us shop.
Voice recognition accuracy is improving with time as well. This makes it a reliable tool to search for your queries. 70% participants of a recent HigherVisibility survey reported using voice search at least once in month. And 50% reported to have used it weekly or daily. According to Google, around 20% of mobile searches are made using voice tools. As per prediction by ComScore, mobile voice searches will increase up to 50% in 2020.
How To Make Most Of It?
Text inquiries are specific and short. On the other hand, voice searches are longer and more detail-oriented, as searchers expect clear, quick solutions. In order to make your content optimized for voice search, you might need to make some of these changes to your content.
- Use long-tail keywords to provide specific solutions to searches.
- Use a natural tone, addressing questions such as how, what, where and when.
- Revamp your FAQ section. Consider how searchers would question about something and incorporate that in content.
- The most prevalent searches are “want to know”, “want to buy”, “want to do”, and “want to do.” Take some time in researching your consumers’ wants and then offer solutions.
- Focus on improving your local SEO, as most of the times voice searches look for local results.
Content Isn’t Getting Obsolete
Though content is old-fashioned, it is to meant to accompany us for long. This fact doesn’t require doesn’t require any proof. However, Google is constantly trying to decipher search intents and as a result, constantly evolving. It ranks content on specific parameters such as context and topical relevance so that the user’s queries can be addressed specifically. Optimizing content now simply doesn’t rely on keyword integration, and follows a complex approach. Right now quantity is far more important than quality, as most SEO’s agree that creating longer articles help in improved ranking than high-quality short write-ups.
How To Make Most Of it?
Rather than producing thin pages optimized for specific queries, you may need to redesign your keyword strategy, avoiding targeting several keywords. Instead you should think about most searched for queries, grouping them logically and tailoring the content that would satisfy the intent.
Keywords shouldn’t be completely avoided. However, you should use them in natural tone, avoiding stuffing them in your content. Make the reading experience unique, addressing your users’ needs by using some keywords supported with relevant topics.
